Because I can't squidge it through your letterbox...

This blog post has been created because I've been asked to squidge some battenburg through my friends letterbox and considering she lives in Somerset, It would be difficult to do!

This blog will be more - how to do something in step by step / picturesque view.   Again, not something I normally do.

So yeah, a little different to my normal cupcakes.  I present to you...


BATTENBURG.


Easy peasy really....

Make the normal  4,4,4,2  sponge mixture.

For those that  are confused by 4442. This is 4 oz of Self Raising Flour,  4oz of Caster Sugar,  4oz Stork Butter and 2 large eggs.

Once you've made the mixture, add Almond extract.


I have a special metal tray for battenburg purposes that is split into 4 equal square blocks.  If you dont have this, then have no fear.  Just use two bread loaf tins.


Whichever tin you use,  make sure you grease it.  All inner edges!


Then portion 1 half of the mixture into the bread tin or  two of the quarts.

Then colour the rest of the mixture with a pink gel.

You need to use Gel colouring because if you use the pink waterbased you get in the supermarkets the colouring will 'cook out' leaving a very dull yellow sponge.  Gel can be bought at all good bakery stores.  I got mine from Biggers of Bailgate in Lincoln.

Once you've coloured the sponge;  layer into the second bread tin or the last two quarts.

Make sure the bottom is covered in a nice even layer.   In a bread tin, it will look a tiny amount of mixture but you don't need very much as it rises significantly.

Preheated to 180 oven,  20 minutes.   The sponge will be slightly brown on the top.

I forgot to take a picture when it first came out the oven,  whoopsies!

Leave to cool for a few minutes and transfer to a cooling rack,  loosen all edges with a spatula because popping out.

As you can seem  I managed to 'somehow' get a pink and yellow sponge - not sure how I did that... I think its because one of the quart sections wasn't completely flat at the bottom so some pink leaked in to the yellow....


Once the sponge has cooled, stack the sponge into a square block.  To do this you will need to trim down all edges of the browned sponge.

Disgard the stacked sponge to the side for a short time because now comes the difficult part - or as difficult as its gonna get.

To save you craning your neck, I have used Tesco's own Golden Marzipan and Tesco's own Apricot Jam.

Why Apricot Jam?    Because it has very little flavour and is used as adhesive between the sponge and the sponge/marzipan.

SO....

Spread the work top with caster sugar and roll out the golden marzipan to double the size of the stacked sponge.... big enough to wrap over the top - its really trial and error here.

Try not to make it too thick and not too thin - difficult task.   If you make it too thin, the marzipan will tear when wrapping. Too thick and it wont bend easily / and will be overpowering when eating.

(to let you into a little secret... I forgot the sugar, and I ended up getting very sticky and peed off as the marzipan stuck to the worktop and immediately tore.  It wasn't until I realised my 'schoolboy error' that everything came together

So yes, this why there is no photos because it would just be a mess of ripped marzipan and cartoon sweary words...)

So, once you have your marzipan at the desired length... plonk the stacked sponge in the middle ... and use apricot jam to stick the stacked sponge together.

Most 'normal' people would strain the Jam to remove the fruit ... me?   Too lazy.   I just spreaded the jam and pick the fruit bits out :-P

First do a last check that the marzipan is the correct size.

This is what happens if you do not put apricot Jam to stick the sponge to the marzipan:

Yes, this is correct... I forgot to do it! heh.  I own up to my mistakes ;-D

Once you've done your last check, unroll it again.... and then smear apricot Jam (removing lumps if youve left them in) and then roll it back up.    Extra jam may be needed at the join.  

Using a very technical term... "squidge" all edges against the sponge and turn the the battenburg so that join is at the bottom.

If you've done as I've said and used sugar... there will be a light dusting of sugar on the outside of the marzipan.

E VOILA:

As you can see the bottom is slightly too thick - this is for me to improve next time.

Also, the pink seeping in to the yellow is on show too.

Ho hum... It tastes gooooooood.



TOODLES! :-D

Stars in your....Lemon?

Helloooooo there...


So I went for Lemon cakes this time....  My original plan was do lemon cake with a lemon curd core followed by a sweet buttercream (to combat the sharpness of the curd) with citrus sprinkles.  Did I do it this way?  nooooooo....

Not all plans go to plan.... mainly because I forgot to buy curd at the supermarket
annnnnnd I didnt have any change to go to the corner shop (you have to spend over £5 to pay on your card and I didnt need anything else!) - so, I changed my plan to:

4, 4, 4, 2 - as per usual.

with Lemon extract.    My friend Graham was here a the time and I made him taste it.....not to give him salmonella or anything but the amount of batter I've eaten...its not killed me yet!

Tablespoon in each case.

Into the oven they went for 20 minutes.

A bit disappointed that they hadnt risen as much as I'd hoped...but they did fine. 

Make sure you leave them in the tins for a minute or two, no longer.  Stick them on a wire rack after.  If you leave them in the tins to cool down,  the cases can become stuck to the cake and make it difficult to remove when eating.  I've done it enough times where I've taken them out the oven, stuck them on side and then walked off..... 

I waited for them to full cool and stuck them in a air tight box as decided I wasn't gonna do the topping until today (I baked them yesterday - Saturday)

I made the buttercream, attempted with lemon juice but it didnt taste that lemony so I chose the same extract that I put in the cake.

Chose not to put any colourant in it.

Also chose to make Stars to put on the top instead of the citrus sprinkles.  However, when getting into my icing box, I discovered that my box isn't as air tight as desired and had some balls of hard icing waiting for me:

On the upside, I managed to find some that was still useable and created some stars and sprinkle

glitter on them too - I LOVE edible glitter. Its is awesome.

For the first time I've managed to do some swirls I'm proud of and that I did once, and once only. 

Most the time I end up scraping it off and starting again, atleast a few times but nope... Once and once only :-)

I created these:

I'm not quite sure what the black mark is on the bottom left cake, but I shall investigate :/

One thing I did discover with these stars - especially the larger ones,  you need to make sure you don't roll the icing too thin as they wont stay a star shape on the cake itself.. the points will flop and they look more like star fish than pointy stars, but also if you make the icing too thick.... the middle of the star is pronounced as opposed to being a flat star.  So yeah, not to thick... not too thin... make take practice because as you can see, mine aren't perfect either!

TOODLES!

Valentines Day Cupcakes - This time lets say "I Heart Chocolate"

So...I felt better today and felt bad that I hadnt played with my new heart cutters...!

Today I had such good feedback about my pink and sparkly v.day cupcakes, and one of my colleagues said He wanted to know how creative I could be with chocolate.......

I present to you,  chocolate cake:

The usual 4,4,4,2  but this time I reduced the flour and made it up with Bournville Chocolate Powder.


This time I decided to do a Hazelnut chocolate spread (Asda's own version of Nutella) centre.

To put fill the centre I had to cut it out of each of the cakes.

All I used was a knife to spread it in.

 I use a tray to do these kind of things as it can be quite timely if the icing sticks - hence why I use greaseproof paper as I fell out of love with cornflour!

E VOILA:  Hearts.

                                                                 

Next -  Buttercream with more bournville cocoa powder. This time I added the left over cake that had come from the middle too.

I had a mass fall out as I kept choosing the wrong nozzle and the bag kept bursting and so I ran out of mixture and so ended up with 2 cakes without icing as I got fed up!  I'm only human :D

annnnnnd like magics:

TOODLES! :D

Valentines Day Cupcakes..... Pink and Sparkleh.

SOOOoooo I promised one of my readers that I'd get some valentines day cupcakes done,  but unfortunately due to not feeling so good... I didn't really fancy playing with my new red regal icing and heart shaped cutters.  Instead I did these:

               Victoria sponge mix  4, 4 , 4 , 2 ...   with strawberry flavouring and pink gel colouring. 

In some pink dotted cases that I got for christmas oddly enough from my line manager...

Last time I tried to make pink sponge, it went into the oven pink and came back out sponge coloured - so I changed the waterbased colouring I had to a gel version and crossed my fingers.

18 minutes later .... Fan Oven on 190.
 

Was slightly disappointed as they looked sponge coloured until I cut them open.......! 

Slightly pink sponge - HUZZAH!  

Nexxxttttt....

I made butter cream using  Stork, Trex and Icing Sugar with yet more Pink gel colouring and yet more strawberry flavouring.  Overkill ?  NAH!  Just messy... 

Using two different types of nozzle:

annnnnnnd these sprinkles:

Yes, they are foreign, that's because they are from Madeira. Saw them in the bakery aisle in the PING! supermarket.

I made the below with a touch of red edible glitter :-D  ...HAPPY DRIBBLING.... and Happy Valentines Day!

What IS that one on the right you say..... 

Its a smiley face - the last of the icing I could squeeze out!

TOODLES!

Peanut Butter Cakes

Now I've done Peanut Butter Cakes two different ways; and I think the second way I did it was the best. I'll let you know what my tester thought - because I don't actually like peanut butter. I did it for a friend!

Make it ever so difficult knowing what it tasted like so I had to just guess! 

The first way I did the cakes was to do a Peanut butter sponge and a milk chocolate peanut butter topping. 

        Looks awful....

This went along fine and dandy,  but I found that if I really wanted a peanut butter kick (according to my tasters) then I needed to add more peanut butter.   For this recipe I used smooth peanut butter.

When it came to the milk chocolate topping,  I decided to add peanut butter to it - this wasnt in the recipe.   The only reason why was the topping was meant to have Reeces peanut butter chips (just like milk chocolate chips but PB!)

Reeces being an American product, I hunted high and low in and out of all kinds of random stores but I couldn't find any, so I used PB to flavour the topping instead. 

Little did I know that If I had only asked my friends Chris and Kelsey Nicholson (in Portland, US), they would of have quite willingly sent me some... of which they did... on mass. 

Seeing as I don't like Peanut Butter this went towards two friends Christmas presents, the items I actually wanted is that huge bag in the bottom right corner of the photo. 

I sent my friends Chris and Kelsey two tubs of Marmite in return,  this was in October. Its February now and they still havent arrived. Who knows where they've got too! Bermuda Triangle perhaps?

      1200g of marmite - yuck!

Anyways - back to the cakes! 

As I didnt have the chips at the time of making the first lot of cakes; this is what they turned out like:

                                                                                                                   Not the most attractive looking cakes

The second lot of peanut butter cakes were done by having chocolate sponge (no PB at all) and with a peanut butter buttercream icing.

I found the recipe on the internet,  had to convert it from cups to grams! That was new!

I chose to use crunchy peanut butter this time... and the first fatal mistake was using a nozzle that in the end the butter cream wouldn't come out because of the crunchy pieces and I hadn't realised I thought the butter cream was just too thick that it wasnt piping..... and then the plastic piping bag starting to piece with the crunchy pieces. EEEP!

So after a change of nozzle and the use of the reeces pieces that Chris/Kelsey sent me:

VOILA...

I was concerned the chocolate cake was a little dry, but the butter cream made up for it. 

Anywho... thats the PB cakes, the Emily way....

Toodles for now!